Spain gives you cankles

It's a solid 6 SINGLE SPACED pages long. Best of luck getting through it!!

Oh my gosh, I love Spain. I never had any drive to visit and see the country, but after these few days… I never want to leave. It is super laidback and chill, but there is so much to do! Everyone is super nice and friendly, even randos on the street will take the time to ask you where you are from and give suggestions on where to go or eat. It’s been great, besides the fact that it gives you mad cankles!!!



Day one was long. We decided to wake up and get breakfast at 8 in the lounge to see the country, since we pulled in some time in the early morning. So immediately when I first got out of bed, I noticed that we weren’t rocking anymore, it was so weird. After 8 days at sea, that is the FIRST thing you notice! So we get up to the lounge and BAM! there is Spain. We are in the port so we were next to a few cruise ships, all of which COMPLETELY dwarf the little MV Explorer. Like for real. I’ll post pictures later, but it is insane. We all thought our 7 decks were plenty, but some of those other ones are 20 decks. It’s crazy.

Just past that you can see the city. It is super congregated into pretty small area, which is good for us since we don’t have to walk too much (LIES. Details later.). So we took pics and freaked a bit before going to get ready for the day. By 9:45, we had sat through a diplomatic meeting (basically just don’t get arrested for doing drugs), gotten our passports stamped, and sat around A LOT. People started leaving the ship at 10. We couldn’t, cause most of us had FDPs through SAS to go on, so since we leave with the FDP group there was no point to get off and then right back on. So Katie and I waited for the intercom to call for Montserrat.

Montserrat is a monastery on the hills of Barcelona just outside the city limits. When we finally got called, we grabbed a lunch box and got off the ship and went through security and such. First step on land was great. We got on the buses and headed over to the monastery. When we got there… wow. It is literally PERCHED on the top of this peak, it is crazy! We walked around the little city (?) and looked at the shops. For some reason, there were TONS of little huts selling cheeses and wines and chocolates… at the monastery. Super bizarre. But we went into the church and it was awesome. Huge domed ceilings, gold trim, beautiful frescos, but tons and tons of tourists. There were so many that the line to see the Black Madonna was like at least 2 hours. Since we only had 1.5 hours, we decided to hike to this cross that is right on the edge of a cliff. We couldn’t find the path, but we did get some awesome pics of the view and stuff! It was probably one of the best views ever, not only could you look straight down at the monastery, but you could see Barcelona and all the surrounding villages and stuff. Pretty sweet. 

We ate our boxed lunches and nearly died laughing. It contained a sandwich, hardboiled egg, oreos, apples, caprisun, cake, and a chicken drumstick. They literally threw in what they had leftover from yesterday’s dinner and voila! Lunch haha.

We headed back to Barcelona and got off the bus at Los Ramblas, the tourist street of the city. Katie and I walked around for a bit when we saw Matt and decided to wander with him. We looked for an internet café to sit in for literally 2 hours, and couldn’t find it. We finally stumbled upon it and it was no café. It was like 40 computers lined up along the walls in this sketch Indian street. Only a euro for 30 minutes though!  We skyped with family and friends for a bit and moved on. After that we headed back to the ship to meet up with people for dinner. It was quite the hike. You have to walk up and over this HUGE bridge to get to the ship, but then you are so high up, you have to walk ½ a mile past the ship to get to ground level. So it took like 45 minutes. So painful.

We met up with Jess, Brandon, Nikki, and Amanda for dinner at the ship and then went out to meet up with Mckenna , Savannah, and Craig at the Christopher Columbus statue that marks the start of Los Ramblas. Mckenna, Savannah, and Craig were EXHAUSTED. They had walked all day all around Barcelona and at one point Mckenna stop walking, looked at her foot, and said a blister popped. Soon enough, the pus started seeping through her shoe. Yucky, but such is Spain hahah.

We went to a restaurant in the square where Nikki and I decided to order a huge pitcher of sangria and tapas (snack food). It was our first Spanish food attempt, so we decided to follow the lead of a man who spoke with us about Spain and how to eat/act/be in Spain. David Gies is wonderful, a totally swell guy. He is like 60 and is knighted by the king of Spain (whoever that is) and super nice. So we ordered a spanish tortilla and queso manchego. The tortilla was awesome. It is like potatoes, egg, and cheese made in a massive pan and is sliced like a wedge of pie. It was absolutely delicious. The queso was not what we expected. We both love gooey, cheesy, queso with yummy chips, so we knew that would be the first thing we ordered. I wish someone could’ve videoed our faces when they brought the queso out…. It would’ve been hilarious. Turns out we are dumb and queso here is cheese (DURRRR). So we got like 10 strips of SOLID cheese. What a letdown!! We just cracked up, it was hilarious. Really great cheese though, it just wasn’t the queso we had been expecting haha.

After dinner, we went over a bar hoping to get drinks. Since it was only like 11, most places weren’t open yet. So we started talking to a club promoter, Jerry. He stood and talked to us for ever, and ended up saying that we could get a free drink at this one bar. So we all went there for a second. Nikki, Amanda, and I didn’t really want to sit around when it was only like 11 and there was still plenty of stuff going on. So we ended up walking up and down Los Ramblas to see what was happening. The city is bumping ALL THE TIME. Most spanards don’t eat until like 10-10:30 and then party till the sun goes up, so everyone was still wide awake. We literally were walking for 5 seconds when we saw Andrew and his group. We ended up talking and deciding we should all hang out tonight. We walked down some random alley for some reason and met Mike, another club promoter. He was from Cali, so Andrew and him hit it off. He ended up telling us where a 1 euro pub was and we all headed over there. Ryan’s Irish Pub, the greatest place ever. If I lived in Barcelona, I would be there every night (we ended up being regulars hahaha). It is awesome, a complete gem. We all were talking and met tons of people. Charlie and Jordan from England, Nick and Joe the gingers from Ireland, Swedes, Aussies, Russians; the pub was perfect. When we finally left, it was about 3 and we started the trek back home. We were walking down Los Ramblas almost to the end when Joe ran up to us.


 Mother, you may want to skip this part cause you will most deff freak haha, even though it was a wonderful experience.


Well anyways, he ran up to us and told us that we were being followed by a bunch of men. And sure enough, right behind us were 4 hulking skinheads, I think Russians, following us. They were MASSIVE. Since we only had dear little Andrew and 6 girls, we speed walked the heck outta there. We got home safe and fine, no worries haha, but that was interesting and quite the story.



Day two was…. Exhausting but absolutely amazing. We woke up at 10 (we had a phone chain to wake everyone up on the ship haha) and left by 11 to hit the city. We rode the bus into the city from the ship (saved like 45 minutes) for 2 euros and then just started walking up some side streets to find a place for breakfast. We ended up walking by Ryan’s and talked to the owner for a bit. He gave us a map and directions to a “local” place. We tried to head over there, but it took so long so we just ate in a little hole in the wall café. We got Coke Lights (diet cokes) and bocadillas (little torpedo sandwiches). The ham here is STELLAR.  Super amazing. Then we walked around some more to see the Santa Maria del Mar, an old roman church that was built in the 1300s. It was beautiful.  It had the huge curved arches (Romanesque arches, according to the Global Studies class we are taking! See, we are learning stuff!) and high ceilings. It had crazy awesome stained glass and these old hanging chandeliers. They even had a few of the wooden original pews! The strangest thing was it was smack dab in between the buildings in the city, so you can’t see it until you get out from an alley and then BOOM. Absolutely perfect. I would deff get married there.

Then we walked around the back alleys some more and decided to get on the metro to go to Sagrada Familia, the most famous cathedral in Barcelona. The building started in 1890s and isn’t scheduled to be done till around 2030. The pictures make it seem impressive, but it honestly has nothing on the real thing. We were walking up the stairs from the metro and BAM! there it was looming over us. It is wildly massive. Like oh my gosh. NO picture could EVER do it justice. EVER. I never noticed how much detail was put into it either… there are tiny birds with the texture of feathers carved out from stone and put on the church… only it’s about 300 feet up and no one will ever be able to see it. Gaudi, the designer, was an absolute nut case to think up all this stuff. There are saints and quotes and trees and numbers all thrown on to this crazy building. Originally, we had planned to wait until 7pm to go in because if you go to mass you get in for free. But after seeing the outside, we knew we would want to gawk and take pictures. So 10.5 euros later, we walked in. The texture of the outside is even MORE intense up close. After walking into the church, all of us were blown away. It is kind of like a mess of everything. Columns shooting this and that way, lopsided pillars, stained glass, crazy stairs… it was ridiculous. It was unbelievable. When I post some pictures, you will see.

We lost part of the group after that. So Nikki, Kellie, Andrew, and I decided to take a taxi to El Parc de Güell, a park by the same insane designer, while the rest went back to the ship to nap and stuff. The taxi driver was crazy. He accelerated so freaking fast all the time, like I don’t want to know how people are run over all the time! Even when you cross streets, if you are in the middle when the lights turn, you better be good at Frogger, cause they are gonna get you if you aren’t. The park was in the way top of the hills surrounding Barcelona, and it was so strange. The buildings remind me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, totally bizarre and weird. Really awesome and cool, but bizarre. So we hiked up and down, looking at his outrageous bridges and random columns. We found an awesome spot where you could look down at the ENTIRE city and hippie-d out for a few minutes. It is just not real that that day was day 10 of the voyage and we had known each other for so short of a time. It is wild when I think that I haven’t even known these people for 2 weeks, but I feel like I have for years, and know I’m closer to them than people I’ve known forever.

But after that short intercession, we got hungry and decided to walk to a tapas bar and then get the taxi back to Los Ramblas. Long story short, we didn’t get the taxi. We couldn’t find a tapas bar that was cheap until like an hour after we had left (3 miles of walking at least!) and then by that time we were too cheap to get a taxi. At the tapas bar, we tried out more stuff that David Gies told us to get- croquetas, papas bravas, brushetta, and chorizo… and more sangria. Croquetas are these deep fried balls of potatoes but there are absolutely AMAZING. It’s crunchy on the outside but gooey wet on the inside, with ham and onions and bacon. ZOMG amazing. The papas bravas are like breakfast fried potatoes chunks with this yummy spicy sauce on them- not spicy, but spices-ie. Brushetta and chorizo= duh. Before the server left, Kellie said what we thought was the server’s name- Bahno. Turns out she had a dad moment (Allah= hola anyone? Haha) and was trying to say baño haha. She is from South Carolina so she has a pretty thick accent too, but it was hilarious. We got her to ask for the check in Spanish and instead of saying el cheque por favor, she said el croquete por favor hahahaha. She is hilarious. After we finished eating and relaxing (our feet hurt sooooo bad at this point) we soldiered on.

We walked in residential Barcelona and saw no tourists, which made us super happy. We walked and walked and walked… all the way to Los Ramblas. Don’t quote me, but it was at least 8 miles… I don’t remember when we started walking (maybe 5 or 6ish) but we didn’t get to the END of Los Ramblas till 9pm. And then we still had to walk all the way down! It was great seeing Barcelona in that way, but my feet hurt and my legs are sore.

At the end of the Ramblas is La Plaza de Catalunya- basically the main square. BUT, since there is tons of unemployment, there are protests and stuff going on. In the middle of the square were at least 200 or 300 people camping out. Some had tarp tents, some had real tents, some made these awesome treehouses in the trees (pictures later!). They tore up the poor square and planted vegetables in the ground and spray painted the statues. The government had to dry out the fountain cause the people were getting into it to bath and pee. And it STUNK like pee. Ew. So, thinking it should be illegal for people to do this, we went up to the nearest policia and asked them about it. Turns out it is illegal, but the mayor/president/king or whatever has his hands tied. If he were to do anything to push these people out, it would cause more issues. The policemen hated these hippie people, said they were disgusting people. He was really awesome and was visiting the US for the first time in August. So we walked on and on and on.

We told Miranda and Alexis we would meet them at the Columbus Square at 11 to go out with them, but since it was already 10 by the time we got to the end of Los Ramblas, we just decided to stay out and eat instead of going to the ship. We ended up finding Jerry the club promoter and he got us free cava (bubbly wine of Spain) at his friend’s restaurant. We felt special because NO ONE else had it hehehe. We know all the right people. So we ate for fairly cheap, 10 euros for the meal + the free cava (which was 6 euros on the menu haha YUSSS). After that he tried to get us to do a pub crawl, but we were so exhausted. Our feet hurt, I had a bruise on my collarbone from my purse and camera, and we were drained. So we decided to just go wait on at the Columbus.

On the way there, we walked by a liquor store and saw that wine was 1.5 euros!!! And the cava was like 3.45!!! It was insane, so we got one and decided to crack it open at the Columbus Square in the center of the city. It is like a huge roundabout with the statue BAM in the middle, so it was pretty epic. And it wasn’t illegal (note: on the last night, we learned it actually was semiillegal hahahah oops)! You can have open containers on the street, so we were classy (not.). It felt so wrong though, but it was fine. When Miranda and Alexis walked up to us, we decided to have a chill night and go back to Ryan’s Pub. On the way there, we saw Mike again and he gave us a coupon for a free bruskie, since he loved us. We saw some SASers and invited them to join us. Inside was the same 2 bartenders and Charlie and Jordan. So it was way fun!! We ended up just having a blast and staying late. Tons of fun, I think I love everyone in SAS.



This morning (day 3) has been a bust. I had a Paella tour through SAS that I couldn’t sell so I went on it. Oh my gosh, never again. Not only did I have to wake up at the crack of dawn, but we had to walk around La Boqueria, the market area with loads of seafood and veggies and fruit. I got a delish smoothie, but that was about the only good thing. The tour guide completely BLEW; he left without giving anyone a heads up, so by the time we noticed he was gone, he was a block away. I think we left like 8 people behind. We went to the restaurant where we were gonna make the paella and the burners wouldn’t work. Then when they did, the propane had leaked too much and the fire exploded everywhere. Cool, but I wasn’t enjoying it. Then, they only had seafood paella. I tried some of the squid, but yuck. I tried to eat the rice but it was just too seafoodie. We did get lovely tapas and crème brulle! That was good. But then we were done with it all at like 1:30. Hoping we could go back, they said we had to walk around some mall till 2:45. Oh my gosh. So here I was, trying to limp around with my sore and swollen legs with disgusting cankles (Nikki had them soooo much worse I later found out haha) in some mall for an hour. It was painful. But eh it was an experience I guess!

But then, I got back to the ship and took a nap after leaving a note on the door of Nikki and Kellie telling them to call me when they got back (supposed to be at 4!!!). They ended up not getting back till 9:30 (in their defense, they DID text me, I just didn’t have my phone on me!), so we ate on the ship for $3 (hamburgesas con queso!) and then headed out. There was a big dj concert going on that about 75% of SAS was going on, Kaskade (techno-ie), but since we didn’t want to spend 20 euros on a cover that we didn’t even know sounded like, we decided to just go to the bars on the pier and hang out for our last night in Spain. We walked the bridge (buses stop running at 10:30) and went to the pier. We got some Aussies to take our pic on the water (they were creeps and gross, but made us do funny poses) and then started to walk along the water looking for the strip.

We ended up walking up to this massive boat. I recognized this symbol of a skull with a trident and staff crossing over the front on the back of the ship, but couldn’t remember what it was from. Then it hit me. It was Whale Wars!!!! And just ahead was the flipping Steve Irwin!!! It was nuts. We ended up talking to the dude watching the boat, an intern from Cali, who said they had just gotten in from patrolling the waters of Libya watching for blue fish tuna poachers. It was crazy, Nick you best be jealous!! So yeah.

We kept walking and walking, but couldn’t find these bars and seaside restaurants that everyone was talking about! So we decided to just go back to Ryan’s Pub. Long story short, we thought that we could find it by going in a different alley, but ended up getting lost. So it was midnight and we were wandering down the streets of Barcelona, 4 girls and 0 guys. Brill. But it wasn’t scary at all! The streets were still WAYYY crowded, just the Spanish urchins were being obnoxious trying to sell us beers. We all got real good at saying “eh, ah no gracias” with a hand gesture. It works much better than a simple no gracias because you sound fluent, we experimented hahah.

We finally caught a glimpse of the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral and found out where we were. We walked in to Ryan’s at like 12:15 and TONS of SASers were already there!! We got that place sooooo much business. Andrew and his group, who were going to Kaskade, were already there, along with Joe and Nick from Ireland and Mike the promoter, (Charlie and Jordan left that day… sad ). We are regulars for sure. We hung out there for a while after Andrew and his group left to go to the show.

Joe and Nick were going to some other club down the street from Ryan’s so we decided to go for a second before going back to the ship. Down the street got seedier and seedier. Like all our creeper radars were going off and we keep giving each other the eye that it was creepy. When we finally got there, we stood outside kind of trying to make up an excuse why we had to go back, but the dumb bouncer dude kept shushing us. Kind of weirded out (why would the guy from a club be shushing us?), Joe and Nick convinced us to walk in for 2 seconds. We did and were out of there in less than a minute. The first thing I saw was a lounge-ish bed of pillows and about 40 old Spanish men. Like upper 30s-40s. YUCK. They all stared at us when we walked in and got completely silent. There were NO girls in there. Lindsey swears that she saw rooms with beds behind the bar. Basically, we are about 90% sure we went to a prostitute bar… hahahahahah. Looking back, we should’ve guessed it since the bar was called “Sugar” hahahhaha. Oh well. So we hightailed it outta there and went straight home. It was hilarious, we were all cracking up about it when we were on the way back. Who can even guess what type of stories we will get in Italy when we have 7 days of fun!!!!




Day four was very relaxed. We all wanted a chill day to just have the day acting like locals and not tourists. We left at 10:30 to get breakfast and hang out. We got churros con chocolat (basically churros you dip in melted chocolate) and café con Baileys. All of it was super good, but the churros were super duper sweet. I felt like I was at the fair or something. But it is what most of the locals eat! After that we just walked in the Barri Gotic (the gothic quarter) and looked in shops and stuff. The area is really old and still has pieces of the old wall of Barcelona. The arches were built centuries ago and some of the apartments are the same age. Pretty sweet. The shops are cute too- beads, cafés, clothes, ect.

After that we went back to the Boqueria cause one of the girls wanted orange juice, since the oranges here are apparently real good. I got strawberries, which were delicious, not as good as Swedish ones, but good regardless. After that we walked down Los Ramblas and browsed.  We saw a legit pig shop, since ham is a delicacy here, and asked if we could take a picture of the hanging legs since it was so bizarre (hoofs and all still attached and hung from the walls!!). He agreed and asked if we wanted a sample. We said sure and watched as he shaved a piece of meat off this leg. It had the hoof attached to it and was sitting in the sun. The meat was… absolutely revolting. It was warm and slimy and fatty and gross. It even stunk like dead pig hair in there. Me and Nikki almost puked right there in the store. Oh my gosh, so nasty.

After that, some of the girls went to the beach while Nikki and I went with our friend Randy (who we ran into on the streets), and got sangria. It was awesome and super chill. We decided to walk down to browse some of the stores with him and ended up on what we thought was La Plaza Catalunya. What was weird is that all the protesters were GONE. Like it did not even look like the same place! We got a tad confused and then noticed that the place was absolutely swarming with police. It was nuts! Turns out that the police stormed the place and the protesters scattered the night before. Mckenna and Katie said they were RIGHT THERE on the edge of the square and saw the police swoop in! I’m totally jealous of them getting to be in it. They said that there were a few hippies running with their pot plants, trying to get out haaha. Pretty sweet!

After that we bolted to the ship to make dock time at 6. If you are late, every minute= an hour you have to stay on the ship at the next port. We got on perfectly fine and are now working on our volcano documentary for Italy (WHICH IS IN 2 DAYS!!!!!). I can’t believe this trip. It is seriously the best thing I’ve ever done and I’ve made the greatest friends everrrrr. I wanted to cry leaving Spain cause I loved it so much, so I’m worried what’s gonna happen in Boston! Can’t I just live on this ship? Balls, 14 days down, 52 to go!! Pleaseeeee go by slowly. Ciao, see ya after the Italy adventure!!